The Internet has become increasingly popular with end users, to the extent that advertisers have become attracted to this new medium. A typical type of Internet ad is known as the banner ad, which is generally displayed on the top of each web page. Operators for popular news and other sites, for example, can increase revenue by selling banner ad space to advertisers.
Frequently, advertisers choose sites to pay for banner ad space based on two criteria. First, advertisers pay to have their ads shown to specific types of people. For example, a golf store might want to have its ads shown on a sports-related page, or to people who are likely to be interested in golf based on their browsing history. Second, advertisers pay to have their ads served in such a way that they are likely to be “clicked on”, so that the user will be transported to the advertiser's web site. One way to increase revenue generated from web advertising is thus to increase the “click through” rate of the ads shown; sites with higher click through rates can likely charge more to those advertisers who are interested in attracting people to their web sites. The click through rate of an ad is the percentage of times a user clicks on the ad to be transported to the advertiser's web site, against the number of times the ad is shown. Advertisers in need of advertising are thus attracted to sites that generate click through, and are usually willing to pay extra to those sites that can deliver increased click through.
One way to increase click through is by targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is the practice of showing ads to individuals based on information about them, such as their web browsing history and demographics, to increase the click through rate.
A difficulty with targeted advertising in the context of web advertising, as well as other advertising environments, is that simply showing each user the ad that will most likely be clicked will typically not be a valid approach. In particular, sites sell ad space to many different advertisers, and all of those contracts must be fulfilled regardless of the click through rates of the individual ads. Consequently, targeted-advertising approaches must explicitly take into account the number of times that each ad needs to be shown.
Targeted advertising with quotas is one type of process that is generally referred to as targeted delivery of item with inventory management. Targeted delivery of item with inventory management is generally defined as having an inventory of an item available, such that its inventory is desirably managed to produce an optimal result, such as maximum revenue. For example, in the case of targeted advertising, there is a limited number of ads that can be shown, such that the display of ads to users is desirably managed so that the “click through” rate of the ads is maximized. Another type of inventory management is product or service placement in electronic commerce contexts generally.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.